Chinese New Year, also called Spring Festival, is the most important festival to Chinese people. It is time for families to be together and a week of an official public holiday. As the most colorful annual event, the traditional Chinese New Year celebration lasts longer, up to two weeks, and the climax arrives around the Lunar New Year’s Eve. Many activities are held to celebrate the festival, such as dragon dances, setting off firecrackers, making dumplings, etc.
The Spring Festival marks a new year on the lunar calendar and represents the desire for a new life. It is called the Spring Festival in China, because it starts from the beginning of Spring and marks the end of winter and the beginning of spring.
The date of the Chinese New Year is determined by the lunar calendar: the holiday falls on the second new moon after the winter solstice on December 21. Thus, each time the New Year in China falls on different dates of the usual Gregorian calendar, between January 21 and February 20.
Every street, building, and house where Spring Festival is celebrated is decorated with red. Red is the main color for the festival, as red is believed to be an auspicious color. Red Chinese lanterns hang in streets; red couplets are pasted on doors; banks and official buildings are decorated with red New Year pictures depicting images of prosperity.
From 0:00 to 0:30 and even later there would be loud bangs of firecrackers. Chinese people have by long tradition set off firecrackers, originally to scare away the legendary monster Nian which emerges at midnight. In recent years, many urban areas have a firecracker ban or set special area or period for fireworks, to prevent accidents and threats to air quality.
Home is the principal focus of the Spring Festival: Chinese New Year (Lunar New Year) is a time for families to be together. Chinese New Year’s Eve is the most important time. Wherever they are, people are expected to be home to celebrate the festival with their families.
The Chinese New Year’s Eve dinner is called ‘reunion dinner’, and is believed to be the most important meal of the year. After reunion dinner, families normally sit together to watch the Spring Festival Gala, one of the most watched TV shows in China. At the same time, most people send WeChat red envelopes or short messages to acquaintances by phone.
With the popularity of instant messaging apps, greeting cards are seldom seen. From the morning to the midnight of the New Year’s Eve, people use the app Wechat to send various text messages, voice messages, and emojis, some of which featuring the New Year’s animal sign, to exchange greetings and good wishes.
Like at Christmas in other countries, people exchange gifts during the Spring Festival. In rural areas and for older people the New Year gift giving tradition is still strong, but increasingly younger people prefer just to receive red envelopes (by hand or electronically), having money in. WeChat even has its own red envelope button. Red envelopes are believed to bring good luck because they are red.
Lantern Festival
Celebrated on the 15th day of the first Chinese lunar month, the Lantern Festival traditionally marks the end of the Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) period. Billions of lanterns and giant lantern and drone displays makes the time festive.
In the beginning of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25–220), Emperor Hanmingdi was an advocate of Buddhism. He heard that some monks lit lanterns in the temples to show respect to Buddha on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month.Therefore, he ordered that all the temples, households, and royal palaces should light lanterns on that evening.
Lantern Festival is the first full moon night in the Chinese calendar, marking the return of spring and symbolizing the reunion of family. People will go out to look at the moon, send up flying lanterns, fly bright drones, have a meal, and enjoy time together with family and friends in parks and natural areas.
Eating tangyuan is an important custom of the Lantern Festival. Tangyuan (‘soup round’), ball-shaped dumplings, are made of glutinous rice flour and are stuffed with different fillings such as white sugar, brown sugar, sesame seeds, peanuts, walnuts, rose petals, bean paste, and jujube paste or a combination of ingredients. They are usually sweet.
Qingming
Qingming Festival, also called Tomb Sweeping Day or Pure Brightness in English, usually falls on April 4 or 5. People commemorate and show respect to their ancestors by visiting their graves, offering food, tea or wine, burning incense, burning or offering joss paper (representing money), etc. They sweep the tombs, remove weeds, and add fresh soil to the graves. They might stick willow branches, flowers, or plastic plants on the tomb.
It is also a time for Chinese people to go outside for a picnic to enjoy the picturesque greenery of spring. Qingming is also called Taqing Festival. Taqing (‘tread green’) means a spring outing. The festival usually falls on a day not long before everything turns green in the north, and well into the spring flower season in the south. It marks the beginning of the season when people spend more time outside as the weather warms up.
There are various popular activities for Qingming Festival. Apart from the tomb upkeep and repair, spring outings, kite flying, and putting willow branches on gates and front doors have been an important part of this festival since the beginning.
People believe that wearing soft willow branches and or place the branches on gates and front doors will ward off wandering evil spirits during Qingming. That willows are considered magical is mainly a Buddhist influence. According to historical records, there is an old saying: ‘Put willow branches up on gates; drive ghosts away from houses.’
Sweet Green Rice Balls (‘green dumpling(s)’) are a popular Qingming food that are made of a mixture of glutinous rice powder and green vegetable juice and stuffed with sweetened bean paste. Sweet green rice balls are jade-green in color, glutinous in taste, and sweet in aroma.
Dragon Boat Festival
Dragon Boat Festival, also known as Duanwu Festival, is a traditional and important celebration in China. Dragon Boat Festival falls on month 5 day 5 of the Chinese lunar calendar (around mid-June). The most popular and representative activity of Dragon Boat Festival is dragon boat racing.
It’s a traditional festival full of traditions and superstitions, maybe originating from dragon worship. The wooden boats are shaped and decorated in the form of a Chinese dragon. Its length generally is about 20–35 meters in length and it needs 30–60 people to paddle it. During the races, dragon boat teams paddle harmoniously and vigorously, accompanied by the sound of beating drums. It is said that the winning team will have good luck and a happy life in the following year.
Dragon boat racing is said to originate from the legend of people paddling out on boats to seek the body of patriotic poet Qu Yuan (343–278 BC), who drowned himself in a River. As the legend says lumps of rice were thrown into the river to stop fish eating his drowned body.
No wonder Zongzi, representing these lumps of rice, is the most traditional Dragon Boat Festival food. They are a kind of sticky rice dumpling made of glutinous rice filled with meats, beans, and other fillings. Zongzi is wrapped in triangle or rectangle shapes in bamboo or reed leaves, and tied with soaked stalks or colorful silky cords.
Double Seventh Day
(Valentine’s Day)
The Double Seventh Festival (Qixi Festival) is also known as a Chinese Valentine’s Day. Double Seventh Day falls on the 7th day of the 7th month of China’s lunar calendar (around mid-August), that’s why it is called Double Seventh Day.
The Festival is based on a romantic legend about a weaver girl Zhinü and an ox herd Niulang. Their love was not allowed, thus they were banished to opposite sides of the Silver River, symbolizing the Milky Way. Once a year, on the 7th day of the 7th lunar month, a flock of magpies would form a bridge to reunite the lovers for one day.
Though in Chinese cities, Western Valentine’s Day is now more popular than Qixi with young people, the romantic legend of Niulang and Zhinü has taken deep root in the hearts of Chinese people. It probably always will be told from one generation to the next.
Mid-Autumn Festival
The Mid-Autumn Festival is also called the Moon Festival or the Mooncake Festival. It traditionally falls on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese lunar calendar, which is in September or early October in the Gregorian calendar.
The Mid-Autumn Festival is the second most important festival in China after Chinese New Year. Chinese people celebrate it by gathering for dinners and lighting paper lanterns.
The common customs of the Mid-Autumn Festival include family members eating dinner together, just like a Thanksgiving dinner, sharing mooncakes (‘moon-cake(s)’, worshiping the moon with gifts, displaying lanterns, and regional activities.
In the past, the Moon Festival was celebrated at harvest time. Ancient Chinese emperors worshiped the moon in autumn to thank it for the harvest. Mooncakes were a kind of offering to the moon. They are named after the moon goddess (Chang’e), who is said to make this kind of cake. The ordinary people took the Mid-Autumn Festival to be a celebration of their hard work and harvest. Nowadays, people mainly celebrate the Moon Festival as a time for family reunions.
In Chinese culture, roundness symbolizes completeness and togetherness. A full moon symbolizes prosperity and reunion for the whole family. Round mooncakes complement the harvest moon in the night sky at the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Mooncakes typically measure around 5 to 10 cm (2 to 4 inches) across and up to 5 cm (2 inches) deep. Most mooncakes have a pastry skin enveloping a sweet, dense filling. Mooncakes are usually eaten in small wedges during the festival, and shared by family members. They are generally served with Chinese tea, and, very rarely, mooncakes are served steamed or fried.
